Family's Barrier In Cancer

Cancer is a serious health issue that has tremendous impact on a person’s life. The diagnosis is a distressing moment for patients and families. In association with cancer, pain is a subjective multidimensional experience for an individual that affects the quality of life of patients and their families (Ovayulu, Ovayolu, and Aytac, 2014). Pain is major concern of patients, which can inevitably effect quality of life when undermanaged, such as affecting relationships negatively. Currently, families are becoming increasingly encouraged to become involved in patient’s care. However, patient’s and family’s fears and attitudes on pain management can hinder a patient’s pain relief. The focus of this paper is to explore family’s barrier in cancer
With that being said, when families have misconceptions regarding pain control, the patient is more likely to be non-compliant to the pain management regimen. The likelihood of addressing barriers and dispelling misinformation in acute care settings is higher than community settings due to a larger number of health care providers. Lin et al.,(2006) mentions that when a family member understands pain concerns they are more in a position to advocate, and provide quality care to the patient at home (as cited in Saifan, Basbayreh, Batiba, and AbuRuz, 2014). Therefore, it is imperative for nurses to address family’s concerns in the hospital setting to improve patient’s and families’ quality of
The search was conducted on the RULA database for articles. Various terms were searched in combinations such as the following: “caregiver barrier cancer pain”, “family barrier cancer pain”, “family oncology” cancer pain management” “fear”. The searches were limited to scholarly articles in English, nursing discipline, and published between 2011 to 2016. The preliminary search for journal articles were 1,632 articles. I focused on the top twenty articles that were listed. Seven of these papers were removed because the articles were not family oriented. Four other articles were discarded because the settings were in homes, rather than an acute care setting. One article was discarded because it was a systematic review. Eight articles were chosen to screen for relevance of topic in which full text was reviewed. Three of these articles were chosen based on exact keywords that were searched, appropriate nursing implications, conceptual definitions, and descriptive barriers and concerns of families. Specific details of these articles which have been summarized can be found in extraction tables in the